


Two Weeks' Notice

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Fu is a bit of a convenient Dumbledore figure, Gen, Identity Reveal, Plagg is also the god of snark and Tikki is the goddess, help help I'm falling, noooo I want to stay in my old fandoms, oops I complicated it again, so like everybody's done this story already sorry yeah sorry, throwing Fu under the bus a little sorry not sorry, waywren is a muse and enabler and did a lot of dialogue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-05-21 15:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14917883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: "Ladybug."  Its voice echoed oddly, the akuma's robotic soprano underpinned by a man's harsh voice.  Papillon’s voice.  "Bring your miraculous to Sacré-Coeur in twenty minutes, or you will never see Chat Noir again."





	1. Chapter 1

_ CRACK _ .

 

Time seemed to stop at that sickening snap of bone across the plaza, one unbearable eternity before Chat screamed.  Papillon's violet outline flared into life across the akuma's face, just the corners visible to Ladybug where she'd been dropped too far away to help.  Her yo-yo was still a tangled mess where the akuma's portals had tied it up in knots around several lamps, a bicycle, and her own leg; Chat's baton was at the bottom of the Seine.  Her partner was trapped under a mountain of glistening akumatized mechanical hand and the thing had just--

 

Black boiled off the blond struggling under its grip.

 

\-- taken Chat's miraculous.

 

_ No _ .

 

The akuma's cackling stopped short.  The violet outline pulsed once, twice.  Then the akuma roared, shoved the blond and the ring into separate portals, and turned its ominously blank face onto her.

 

"Ladybug."  Its voice echoed oddly, the akuma's robotic soprano underpinned by a man's harsh voice.  Papillon’s voice. "Bring your miraculous to Sacré-Coeur in twenty minutes, or you will never see Chat Noir again."

 

The akuma dropped a portal at its feet and vanished.

 

Papillon was going to regret  _ ever  _ touching her cat, Ladybug swore.  Somehow. As soon as she untangled herself.

  
  


-0-0-0-

  
  


Adrien landed hard on a stone floor, in a dim room speckled with fluttering white akuma.  

 

"Quit biting me, you little rat!" Papillon snapped.  Adrien shoved himself up to find the man himself just across the room, a jar in one hand and Plagg gripped firmly in the other.  Plagg's fangs glinted against purple leather, a flash of white skin and bright blood dribbling out of the torn material in the kwami's mouth.

 

"Plagg--" Adrien tried to scramble over to him, only for a bright spear of nauseating pain to shoot up from his broken hand, whiting out his vision for a second as he tried to keep the contents of his stomach down.

 

"Get in the jar and behave, and I will provide your holder with first aid."

 

... What.

 

After a long, considering moment, growling into the man's wound, Plagg actually  _ stopped fighting _ .  Adrien could only watch in stomach-twisting horror as the kwami slumped in Papillon's grip, just  _ letting  _ the man drop him into the jar.  He didn't so much as twitch when Papillon screwed its lid on tightly.

 

Then Papillon turned his attention to Adrien.   _ No suit, no kwami, no powers _ ...  Adrien hissed, kicking away as best he could over the floor, only to run up against cold robot legs and get creepy skittery robot fingers clamped down over his elbows.  The akuma hauled him up and stood with arched razorblade-clawed feet over his shoes, leaving Adrien just enough room to squirm to no effect.

 

The man was somehow scarier in real life than as an image the size of the Eiffel Tower.  He seemed to tower over Adrien, perfect posture and lapels that could've been used as knives framing a steely skull-mask.

 

His gloved hand, when he caught Adrien's forearm, was smooth as glass, not a single pock of the texturing Ladybug and Chat's suits had.

 

"Stop struggling," Papillon ordered.  "I have what I want, there's no need for this display."

 

Sheer instinct had Adrien go still just long enough for Papillon to stretch his broken hand out (Adrien hissed through the nausea) and neatly splint it with a pen and pocket square.  Adrien stared.

 

What.

 

Just.

 

_ What? _

 

Then Papillon turned away, as if he hadn't just been all...  _ weirdly human _ , went to the round window looking out over the city, and visibly planted himself there to wait, ignoring Adrien entirely.

 

"What the  _ hell _ ?"

 

"Language, Adrien."

 

Now that was just  _ wrong _ .  "Don't call me that!"

 

Papillon sighed.  "Language,  _ M. Agreste _ ."

 

_ Thanks Pere, my modeling career has me instantly recognizeable to the supervillain terrorizing Paris, that's exactly what my life needed. _

 

There had to be a way out of this.  There had to.

 

Okay, he had: one Portal-style teleporting akuma with a grip on him that would be breakable if its feet weren't made of knives.  One visible exit: the round window, which had Papillon blocking it and would be... difficult to reach, like trying to get past a soccer goalie, but potentially doable if Adrien could get loose.

 

Plagg, in a jar and pawing at the lid fruitlessly.

 

"The jar is laced with a microscopic amount of gold," Papillon said after a few minutes.  "As is the lid. Your kwami will not be escaping it."

 

Dammit.  He couldn't leave without Plagg.

 

He'd have to wait for Ladybug, but... how would she ever find him?  They could be literally anywhere in Paris. Or maybe not even  _ in  _ Paris.  No one knew how the akuma butterflies traveled between Papillon and a victim-- not how fast, not even in which direction they came from.  No one had ever seen a butterfly on its way to trigger an attack. They might very well teleport too.

 

Papillon spoke Parisian French and had never bothered to attack outside the city.  That was the only reason anyone thought he lived in Paris. But for all they knew, Papillon wasn't even in  _ France _ .

 

What was Papillon waiting for, anyway?

 

"Ah."  Papillon turned to the akuma and made a little beckoning gesture.  The akuma shoved Adrien into Papillon's grip, the shock not giving Adrien enough time to react before Papillon had a firm grip in his hair and over his mouth.  "Mlle. Ladybug is downstairs," Papillon informed the akuma. "Please open a portal for her, and then you may go."

 

_ No, Ladybug, don't come, it's a trap and he's letting the akuma go rampage again--! _

 

One portal bloomed open off to the side, just barely in Adrien's line of sight.  It showed a cobblestoned plaza lined with trees, and a fading sunset low on a horizon that had to put them atop one of Paris' few remaining hills.  Ladybug stepped in, the akuma stepped out, and Papillon instantly released Adrien's hair and yanked sharply at the air between them.

 

Adrien caught a glimpse of the akumatized butterfly leaving the victim before the portal fell shut.

 

"Papillon," Ladybug growled.  Then, shocked an octave higher, " _ Adrien?! _ "

 

_ She didn't want to know.  Dammit, Papillon, she  _ didn't want to know  _ and you  _ forced  _ it _ \--

 

Adrien couldn't look.  He couldn't bear to see the horror and disappointment that had to be in her eyes.

 

"Well, then, Ladybug."  Adrien could feel the shift as Papillon... smiled?   _ Ugh _ .  "Let us discuss the terms of surrender."

 

_ She won't give in to you!  She  _ can't _!  Ladybug don't-- _  But she wasn't protesting, why wasn't she protesting?!   _ Not over me... please, we've fought to protect Paris too long... you can't give it up over _ me...

 

"I'm listening."

 

_ No! _

 

"I propose that you use your miraculous to do as I wish," Papillon said smugly.  Adrien bit the hand over his mouth, but he didn't have Plagg's fangs or a good angle: he barely managed to scrape his blunt teeth against the smooth kwami-fabric.  "In exchange, I will return your cat and surrender my miraculous."

 

What.

 

_ What _ .

 

"... What," Ladybug choked out.

 

"I have no interest in the miraculouses past the one thing I wish to use them for."  Papillon scoffed shortly in the back of his throat. "Though I would prefer if Master Fu did not have the selection of the next holder of mine."

 

Ladybug blinked, but the odd comment was enough for her to draw herself up out of her shock, crossing her arms and tipping her chin up firmly.  Adrien's heart sank. "What do you want?"

 

"I want my  _ wife  _ back."

 

"Okay, care to try that again with a bit more 'why it has to be magic' and a lot less creep?"

 

Papillon's grip tightened ever-so-slightly in obvious restrained fury.  "I," he began, voice overcontrolled, "am aware you cannot trust what I would say in such a matter."  The silence stretched as he considered his next words. "... Had she left of her own free will," he said slowly, reluctantly, "she would have taken our son with her."

 

That... hit way too close to home.

 

"Mundane means failed to find her.  Thus," and Papillon spread his free hand to take in the whole situation.

 

Ladybug's shoulders sagged.  "You could've just asked."

 

" _ I did _ ," Papillon snarled.  "Fu threw me out, and clearly didn't take the matter to the kwami at all.  He is far too certain my wife is  _ dead _ ," he spat.  Ladybug's eyes narrowed, and Papillon locked the venom back under his previous icy calm, settling once more.  "I was under the impression that you held the same opinion... but I was also under the impression that both of you were adults.  Clearly I have misjudged the situation intolerably."

 

"Intolerably," Ladybug repeated.  Then, darker and more incredulous, " _ Intolerably _ .  Because  _ you  _ have any sort of problem attacking  _ kids _ ."

 

"You would be surprised what I have 'problems' with, Ladybug.  But we were negotiating my surrender, not debating ethics."

 

_ What ethics _ , Adrien thought reflexively, before the fact that he was captive ( _ cat _ tive! no, this was not a time to pun) and relatively unharmed -- that Papillon was  _ negotiating  _ \-- struck that out of his head.

 

"I'll need to consult the kwami."

 

"One kwami," Papillon countered.  "They are both required for the spell, so either will have sufficient information to judge."

 

"It's about consent, too, Papillon."

 

"... Ah."  Papillon sounded discomfited, almost as if he was embarrassed not to think of that.  Not that he would, since it wasn't like he got consent for his stupid akuma. Jerk.

 

Then he shifted, and before Adrien could take advantage of the opening, Papillon dropped a hand to the small of his back and shoved him hard into Ladybug's arms.  She yelped, catching him, and that moment where they were both tangled up in each other gave Papillon enough time to send something glass smashing.

 

Ladybug turned Adrien around only for him to see Papillon had grabbed a fancy snooty cane, and smashed Plagg's jar with one dramatic sidelong sweep.

 

"Plagg!"  The little kwami darted into Adrien's unbroken hand, clutching at his collar when Adrien drew him close.  He stank of cheese and his whisker-antennae tickled at Adrien's throat, and he probably had glass shards caught in his fur and waiting to stab Adrien's palm, but he was free.  "You're okay." Adrien blinked back hot tears.

 

"I am keeping the ring," Papillon said.  "But you may consult with both kwami."

 

He'd just let Adrien and Plagg go.  Mostly. Plagg couldn't get too far from the ring, and Adrien couldn't just leave Plagg, but... he'd let them  _ go _ .

 

"A goodwill gesture," Papillion explained, reading their obvious shock.

 

Ladybug dragged Adrien away before he could think of a good Chat-like comeback.

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


No time to panic.

 

(Adrien was Chat,  _ Adrien  _ was her minou the entire time, Adrien was-- Adrien was  _ captured by Papillon _ and if Papillon had been even one whit more villainous than he was turning out to be Adrien would be... would be-- 

 

Ladybug was never going to get the image of Adrien struggling against the man's gloved hand out of her head.  She was going to have nightmares forever.)

 

No. Time. To. Panic.

 

She slammed the door to a small antechamber behind them and let Adrien go.  He stumbled to a confused halt a few steps further into the room (she was between him and the door, good, she had to be the first line of defense now) and spun to face her.  His cat kwami was little more than a blob of shadow cupped in Adrien's good hand, protectively high over Adrien's heart.

 

He looked... she had no idea how he looked.  Panicked. Scared. Like he'd lost so much more than the kwami he was so wet-eyed over.

 

(It was  _ Adrien  _ how was she going to  _ talk  _ to him--?)

 

Ladybug could talk to Adrien.  Confidence!  Business!  Negotiations!  Leave it to me, good citizen!

 

... She needed Tikki out to be able to consult.

 

There was a curse word for this situation and Ladybug had no idea what it was.  She couldn't even keep up her show of confidence, because there was really no choice.  "... Might as well get it over with," she muttered. Then, "Just please don't say the thing about bags, m-minou."  And she squeezed her eyes shut. " _ Tikki spots off _ ."

 

Silence.

 

Siiiiilence.

 

Okay that wasn't some sort of 'how could it possibly be you', so maybe... maybe he was just... no, wait, Adrien was too kind to say something like that, he had to be completely at a loss for some way to put it nicely.

 

She peeked.

 

Adrien looked like Christmas had come early.  She could all but see the sparkles some magazines would put around him in post-production.  Once they'd corrected the gray-green pallor of his face, anyway. Not that he'd usually broken a finger right before a shoot.

 

"Um."  Slowly Marinette's shoulders started to drop.  When had she curled into herself? "You're not yelling.  And looking a lot happier than I was expecting with the whole 'got your miraculous' and 'it's me' things and wow can I please shut up now."  She caught a breath.  _ Stop panicking, this is Chat _ .  "Are you okay?"

 

"My Lady is my Purrincess," he breathed.

 

Marinette's cheeks went painfully hot.  She had no idea if it was from Adrien's gorgeous starry-eyed joy or Chat's infuriating pun.

 

"Kids," the little black kwami in Adrien's hand muttered, with an emerald-eyed overdramatic eye roll.  One tiny paw patted at Adrien's thumb. "Hello? Supervillain? Crazy deal?"

 

"Plagg!" Tikki hissed from Marinette's shoulder.  "They were getting there on their own!"

 

The cat was unfazed.  "The sooner they decide what to do, the sooner they can get my miraculous back and go get me cheese!"

 

"No, he's right.  Mostly." Business now, Chat's terrible flirting later  _ oh god she'd been refusing Adrien for months _ .  "We really do have to deal with that and, um.  So. Tabling it." She took a deep breath and gently plucked Tikki from her shoulder, so she could face her kwami.  " _ Can  _ we try to get his wife?  I mean, is it even possible?"

 

Tikki bit her lip, a flash of almost microscopic white teeth against the vibrant red of her skin.  "... Kind of?" she said dubiously. "It depends on whether she's really alive or not."

 

"Alive," Plagg added with a certain morbid cheer, "yup.  But dead? We'd be ripping the universe apart." Tikki winced, but Plagg brought out one tiny paw and began counting off on his toes.  "Unravelling cause and effect, collapsing dimensions, flipping the properties of fundamental forces, suddenly gravity's super-strong and only works at quantum levels and the strong nuclear force is weak and works across the universe."  He ran out of toes, and spread both paws wide. "Instant collapse and bounce into a new Big Bang." He settled back into Adrien's hand and crossed his forelegs with false nonchalance. "Probably get an antimatter universe and, in fourteen billion years or so, new antihumans."

 

"And in that universe, you'd probably eat sweets and  _ I  _ would eat cheese!" Tikki snapped in exasperation, making Plagg gasp and recoil from her, as she darted around him like a very tiny warplane taking verbal potshots.  "Brie! Hermelin! Coulommiers! Neufchatel! Vacherin!  _ Camembert _ !"  Plagg made a keening sound of dismay.  "Now  _ stop scaring the children _ !"

 

"Tikki you  _ monster _ ," Plagg moaned.

 

Tikki hmmphed and turned back to Marinette, hovering with a sheepish, apologetic smile.  "Anyway, that's why Ancient Egypt's Ladybug had to fight that Pharaoh.  _ His  _ wife was  _ definitely  _ dead."

 

Marinette swallowed.  Okay, by that view, M. Fu kicking Papillon out with the Butterfly Miraculous to send akuma over Paris and not even mentioning it to the kwami was... a very strong contender for best option.  "Okay... can we find out if she's alive without hurting anything?"

 

Tikki beamed.  "We can certainly find out which side of the veil she's on!"  But then her smile faltered. "We'll take a few days to reform afterwards, though, whether she's alive or not... and if she's not..."

 

"We'll be fighting Papillon without you," Adrien finished thickly.

 

Possibly for days.  Marinette's fists clenched.  "... It still might be our best chance," she said.  "If we can just word the deal right... and if you tell us before we have to tell him..."

 

"Of course we'd tell you first!"  Tikki rubbed the side of her head sheepishly.  "We can't really not do that. We won't be physical for a few days-- we'll only be awake in your miraculouses long enough to tell you whether she's alive or not."

 

Adrien started, "But he'll have mi--"

 

"No he won't."  Plagg rolled a lazy glance up at him.  "He'll have to give the ring back to you if I'm going to do this.  Which I might not,  _ Tikki _ .  You threatened the cheese."

 

" _ Plagg _ ," Tikki and Adrien snapped.

 

The little cat stared Tikki down, whiskers perked forward and quivering, for a long moment.  "I'm just saying," he purred. "This could be my last meal." He blinked slowly, not even trying for a poor-hungry-kitten expression.  "You wouldn't deny a poor prisoner his last supper?"

 

" _ Never _ ," Tikki replied virtuously (very clearly meaning that Plagg didn't count yet, though), even as Adrien said, "You're just trying to cadge cheese!"

 

"I am a wise and sensible god," Plagg agreed.  "My cheese?"

 

"Not now, Plagg!" Adrien said.  "There isn't any!"

 

"But--"

 

"How did we get to negotiating about cheese instead of Papillon?!" Marinette asked.

 

"I'm sorry, he's always like this."  Adrien sighed. "So we'll know for a few days whether we can get her back or not.  That's a few days we can keep it to ourselves and plan. He doesn't know how long the... ritual?... takes, right?"

 

"... Wayzz and Nooroo don't," Tikki said slowly, "so no, he wouldn't."

 

"How long do you think we can tell him we'll need?"

 

Tikki eyed Plagg.  "A week?"

 

A week.  Okay. They could work with that, and if she was alive then... then... uhoh.  "And then what?" Marinette asked. "We meet up with Papillon again empty-handed.  Oh, so sorry, we meant we needed a week to check she was alive first! No no we totally believed you, we just need a few more days!  And then Papillon goes 'oh okay that makes sense, no superhero would ever try to trick m--'"

 

Adrien caught her flailing hands.   _ Adrien was holding her hands _ .  "Breathe, Marinette," he told her kindly.  "We can make it two weeks. Or however long they'll need to do the second spell to bring her back if she can be."  He quirked a lopsided, worried little smile at her. "We won't need the kwami awake if we have her back by the deadline, right?"

 

"But--"

 

"We don't have to tell him we're doing two rituals.  Just that we need two weeks."

 

"It  _ is  _ a difficult spell," Tikki agreed.  "Both of them. But if she is alive, and not in this reality, she really needs to come home."

 

"And if she's not... then we're at least armed again.  Okay." Marinette nodded to herself. "Okay. We're doing this, then?  Plagg?"

 

"I want ten kilos of Camembert."

 

"That's a 'yes'," Adrien translated.

 

Plagg made a face at him.  "We done yet? I'm hungry."

 

Marinette sighed.  "I guess we are. Tikki, spots on."

 

(... She didn't realized until she'd finished that she'd added a little extra flourish to the transformation, and stifled her blush mostly by dint of turning away before Adrien could see it.  From the way the tips of her ears burned, it probably didn't work.) "Ready to face him, minou?"

 

"With you at my side?  Always," Adrien replied, and Ladybug now felt the blush creep blazing-hot down the back of her neck.  She hurried back out to Papillon's lofty lair.

 

The man looked as though he hadn't so much as shifted his weight while waiting.  "Your decision?" Papillon prompted.

 

Ladybug really wanted to smack that knowing smirk off the man's face.  "We aren't happy with how you went about this, but we agree that your wife has to be found.  The kwamis need two weeks to do it."

 

Papillon raised one silver-clad eyebrow, but apparently Tikki was right that he wouldn't have any idea how long it'd really take.  "Very well." He took Adrien's ring out of an inner pocket, the inactive metal bright against his gloves. "I shall meet you at the Bataclan theater at 9 pm on the twenty-second.  Should you not appear by midnight, or should I see you running about in uniform prior to 8 pm that day, this deal is off and I shall return to my efforts to obtain your miraculouses the hard way.  I do know of several people who would easily akumatize should they learn of Chat Noir's identity."

 

Shock flashed cold through Ladybug's body, but a glance at Adrien showed no signs of surprise there.  Had he been expecting that? "Agreed," she replied coldly. (The thought of Gabriel Agreste as an akuma... or, worse, Nathalie Sancoeur, who was terrifying  _ without  _ superpowers and far more accessible... brrr.)  "The ring?"

 

"Naturally," Papillon said, inclining his head... and tossing the ring out the window.  "Pardon, I cannot trust you will not attack or follow me." He strode coolly from the room, even as Plagg sailed out the window in pursuit of his miraculous.  Ladybug scooped up Adrien, growling under her breath, looped her yo-yo around the window's curved struts, and swung them outside to follow.

 

She'd thought the window overlooked the cobblestone plaza far below, where the ring could bounce, ricochet, and roll right into a storm drain, or be found by a tourist.  But Papillon's lair had been in a side tower, not the grand dome of the church, and they landed in a small garden surrounded by high iron fencing.

 

"Plagg!" Adrien hissed, still clinging to her like a (very warm and tall) princess.  "Plagg! Where are you?"

 

"Down here!"

 

Adrien let his hands slide from Ladybug's shoulders, taking a careful step out into the grass.  "Where?" There was enough streetlight reflecting off the pale stone and occasional night-blooming white flower to see by, but everything was in grayscale and deep shadows under the bushes and trees.  And Plagg's voice echoed off the odd angles of the garden walls.

 

"Here!"

 

When Plagg didn't come floating out from wherever he was with the ring, Adrien paused.  "... Plagg, are you  _ stuck _ ?"

 

"Kwami of bad luck, what do  _ you  _ think?"  Adrien clapped a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking.  "Come on, I'm getting pollened on here!" A tiny, squeaky sneeze punctuated his complaint, and Adrien lost it.

 

('Doubled over and howling with laughter' Adrien was the prettiest Adrien Ladybug had ever seen.)

 

She left him knelt on the ground giggling, patting around under bushes with his good hand for the kwami.  Hopping the fence and detransforming -- because Marinette couldn't be seen with Adrien, not when Papillon could be anyone in the early evening crowds -- she quickly headed down the hill to buy cheese.

 

One new messenger bag and a wheel of Camembert later, Marinette jogged up to Adrien just before he entered the hospital doors.  "You forgot your bag in the park!" she panted.

 

"Oh.  Thanks, Marinette."  Adrien smiled. "And thanks for the splint, too.  I'll see you in the morning?"

 

"Morning.  Yes." She smiled, and it felt as awkward and fangirlish as ever.  Perfect cover if Papillon was watching oh god how was she going to explain lying about the bag, wait obviously Ladybug told her to.  Right. Right. And Papillon wasn't going to come after anybody for two weeks anyway. Right. "Come by the bakery anytime!"

  
  


-0-0-0-

  
  


When Marinette got home, she buried her face in her pillow and screamed out all her swirling, confused feelings.  Then she put on a playlist Nino had helpfully titled WTF, and let the bass pound all thoughts out of her head until, sometime around midnight, her phone lit up.

 

_ aataku: Does your mom look in your closet? _

_ aataku: Actually, do you even have one?  I don't remember seeing it. _

 

Ugh, thinking now.  She dragged the phone over and thumbed in a reply, hitting the right letters more by luck and habit than attention.

 

_ designmari: no I dont _

_ designmari: storage bench for current season, next season pieces go in basement when theyre done _

_ designmari: y? _

_ aataku: I can't think of anywhere else we could put the kwami that someone won't see, even if it's a homeless person or maintenance worker. _

_ aataku: Definitely not at my house.  Even the attic gets daily maid service.  Pere hates dust. _

_ aataku: That sounded really snobby, didn't it.  But anyway the only reason Plagg gets away with staying here is that he can change hiding spots and he's always with me.  And he eats his cheese too fast for any stashes to get found. _

_ aataku: If you don't have a box your parents won't get curious about, what do you think of a new flowerpot? _

_ aataku: I can get the Gorilla to help carry one in.  Put it on your balcony, put a bit of tape over the hole to hide the light? _

_ designmari: ... help carry one in? _

_ designmari: how big a pot are we talking about?? _

_ aataku: ... I'm mostly sure it'd fit through your skylight? _

_ designmari: brb talking to tikki _

_ designmari: DONT BUY ANYTHING YET _

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


Marinette opened the door the next morning to a brightly, sheepishly grinning Adrien haloed in sunlight.  "So I might've tried to buy something..." he started, alarming Marinette into glancing past him for lurking Gorilla bodyguards bearing flowerpots like knockoff Donkey Kongs.

 

"Is that Adrien?" her mother called from behind the counter.  "You tell him his money's no good at the house door either!"

 

Adrien's grin twitched in a very clear 'gotcha'.

 

"You think you're sooooo funny," Marinette managed to say, stepping aside to give him clear passage.  "Get in here, my parents have rules about feeding strays."

 

"Copiously and often?" Adrien asked hopefully.

 

"It's like you're psychic."

 

Sabine popped her head out of the bakery side of the ground floor as they headed upstairs.  "Have you had breakfast yet, Adrien?" she asked. "Of course you have. Second breakfast is in the warming oven, Marinette, be sure to serve it before it dries out."  The bell at the counter dinged impatiently. "Coming!" Sabine called back cheerfully, and disappeared.

 

"... My parents usually aren't such nerds," Marinette lied.

 

"I'm sure."  His grin broadened.  "I'll have to make a hobbit of coming over to make certain, though."

 

Wait, he did not just-- he  _ did _ .  He  _ nerd punned _ at her.  Worse than Chat ever had!  "Elful punsters don't get treats," she replied, sticking her nose up in the air and stalking into the kitchen.  The oven turned out to hold two plates of mouillettes and soft-boiled eggs, and the counter next to it had a pitcher of orange juice waiting.

 

When she turned back, just-this-side-of-too-hot plates in hand, Adrien was giving her the most pathetic kitten eyes she'd seen since Shrek.  She very nearly dropped the plates. " _ That _ ," she said, smacking them onto the table with a clatter, "is  _ not fair _ .  It should be impossible to be cuter than you already are!  A black hole singularity thing of reality-bending Star Trek levels of impossible!"  Oh god she'd just said that to his face.

 

Adrien stared at her for a long, gaping moment.  Then, he raised one finger. "Um. Cat?" Like that was a reason, all Jack Sparrow going 'hello, pirate?' in glorious dreamboat Adrien-ness with Chat's  _ stupid cute flirty smirk arrgh _ .

 

New subject!  Business!  Right!  "So. Flowerpots."

 

"Flowerpots," Adrien agreed, kindly letting the teasing drop and starting in on breakfast.

 

"Right.  I talked to Tikki," Marinette said.  "She circled out the space requirements for me-- did Plagg do that too?-- and it's pretty two-dimensional.  I'm thinking we could just get a kiddie pool instead."

 

Adrien blinked.  "... You can buy those?  They aren’t just props?”

 

_ Props?  _  "We'll need to take the Metro,” Marinette replied slowly, wondering why he would think a kiddie pool wasn’t actually a thing, “but yes."

 

Adrien lit up.  "We're taking the Metro?  And going to a store? Like a regular store?"

 

"... Yeeees?"  Much to her surprise, Adrien promptly pulled out his wallet, emptied it of credit cards, and put the short stack into her hands.  "What the--"

 

"Nino's Third Rule of Shopping.  I'm not allowed to carry more than five Euros on any excursion, and credit cards are right out."

 

Marinette blinked, even as she put the cards onto the table.  "Why?"

 

"Er.  Well. Nino really tells this story better..." Adrien began with a rueful grin, before launching into the story of his first time in a normal retail store.  It turned out he'd never actually shopped someplace where you could just take things off the shelf and go up to a cashier, not until Nino wanted to grab snacks on their way back to his house one afternoon.  TV was really not the best place to learn how to shop for groceries, so he had Marinette in stitches in just minutes. "And  _ then  _ I found the shopping carts--"

 

She could all too easily picture her Chat hopping right up on the crossbar ready to sail down the aisle like too many commercials, and that was exactly what he'd done.  Except he didn't know how to balance it properly and had gone head-over-teakettle into the basket.

 

"And you have to remember, this was after I had Plagg, so Nino still doesn't know what happened to that cheese aisle--"

 

"Oh no, stop, my sides--"

 

"And the very next morning, Nino showed up with his Rules of Shopping list."

 

Through her giggles, Marinette managed to catch a breath, then, “Okay, this I need to see.  Hear.” She flapped a hand at Adrien, and the boy drew himself up pompously, sticking his perfectly cute nose in the air and sticking his hand in front of his stomach Napoleon-style.

 

“Nino Lahiffe’s First Rule of Shopping!” Adrien’s chin and voice dropped simultaneously, his bright eyes pinning Marinette in place.  “Do not talk about the cheese aisle. Do not look at the cheese aisle. There is no cheese aisle.”

 

“Do I even want to know what Plagg  _ did _ ?”

 

“ _ There is no cheese aisle _ ,” Adrien repeated, even more deeply, before returning to nose-in-the-air declaiming.  “Nino Lahiffe’s Second Rule of Shopping! There is no bakery but Dupain-Cheng!”

 

“That cannot seriously--”

 

“No, really, that’s a rule.  You can ask Nino.”

 

“Nino Lahiffe’s Third Rule of Shopping!  Adrien is not allowed more than five euros per trip!  Nino Lahiffe’s Fourth Rule of Shopping! Carts are only toys after 9 pm!”

 

“... Do you even get out after nine?”

 

“Not as myself yet, no.  But if you google for Chat Noir vids…”  He wiggled his eyebrows, distracting her from the first part of his comment, then beamed and finished, “Nino’s Fifth Rule of Shopping!  There are four rules!”

 

“... No.  No, I absolutely refuse to--  _ no _ .  Nino is not that much of a nerd.”  Marinette’s parents were, which was why she got the Star Trek reference, but Nino was definitely not.  “Also your nose is twitching, kitty.” Adrien clapped his hand over it, which completely failed to hide the amusement in his eyes.  “What’s the real fifth rule?” she asked, and Adrien mumbled something into his hand. “Adrieeeeeeeeen…”

 

Go her, she said that without blushing too much!  Or at least blushing lightly enough that it could be blamed on her bout of laughing.

 

“I am not allowed to be this cute,” he muttered, cheeks going pink.  It took her a moment to realize that was the fifth rule “I think he forgot I make a living out of it.”

 

As it turned out, Nino had not forgotten any such thing.  Adrien, however, had no idea of the difference between ‘being nice to the poor workers’ and ‘being percieved as flirting with the poor workers’.  Marinette hauled him out of the store with the pool bouncing awkwardly in her other hand at an angle over her head and shoulder, grumbling under her breath that he was not allowed to be that cute at them.

 

“ _ Et tu _ , Marinette?!”

 

“I,” she said, “have different reasons than Nino does.  But yes,  _ et moi _ , Adrien.”

 

The kiddie pool, which they had to smuggle in through the side door while Marinette’s parents were distracted by the lunch rush, just barely fit through the trapdoor into her room.  Even that was only because, with some careful effort, the cheap plastic would fold into a bit of a taco shape.

 

“Right,” Marinette said, looking at where the pool almost covered her entire area rug.  “I don’t think we’re going to get it out onto the roof.”

 

Adrien, resting his arms on her floor and still only half in her room at all, eyed the skylight over her bed.  “Definitely not.”

 

Marinette sighed.  “I’ll just have to hope Alya doesn’t come over til,” she gestured weakly rather than finish the sentence, then swallowed.  “Tikki? Whenever you’re ready.”

 

The little red kwami floated up from behind Adrien’s head, and popped the last bite of a cookie into her mouth.  She chewed, swallowed, and then wrinkled her nose in tandem with Adrien as Plagg floated too close licking cheese goo off his paw.  “Ugh, Plagg, go bathe in the sink,” she told him. “Marinette’s room doesn’t need to smell like an old gym locker!”

 

“Like  _ heaven _ , you mean.”

 

“ _ Old gym locker. _ ”  And Tikki punted him neatly into the sink, where he landed with an oddly rubbery-sounding thump and skidded in circles until he hit the drain.

 

“I let you do that,” came woozily from the sink.

 

“Bath!”

 

“Cat!”

 

Adrien met Marinette’s eyes, communicating ‘this is my life’ silently as the kwami squabbled again, until she couldn’t bear his prettiness any more and looked away.

 

Sinkful of kwami fighting for control of the faucet.  Soap. Fabric bins -- she’d aired each one out for a week to get rid of the factory-plastic smell, and kept baking soda in each box to absorb what was left, she wasn’t about to have cheese smell getting in!  Windows. Makeup box.

 

“Oh dear,” Marinette said flatly, eyes on her makeup shelf.  “If Plagg won’t bathe, I’ll just have to use up all my perfume on him.”  In the sink, everything went very, very still. “I’m almost out of Pink Chiffon, you’ll be fine with Warm Vanilla Sugar, right?”

 

“... I surrender,” Plagg whimpered.  “I’ll take the water.”

 

When she looked back, Adrien’s eyes had gone wide and helplessly starry.  “Marinette,” he breathed. “My Lady.  _ Sensei _ .”  He clasped his hands pleadingly together, and for a moment -- with his hands casting a shadow over his eyes from below -- he was all Chat.  “Teach me your ways.”

 

Marinette bent and booped his nose.  “But then you wouldn’t need me, kitty.”

 

“ _ Lies _ ,” Adrien said fervently, dropping his hands and breaking the illusion.  “Lies and  _ slander _ .”

 

She was not going to blush she was not going to blush she was not going to blush why did her face feel hot dammit.

 

(Over miserable quiet growling in the sink, Tikki was a blur of red under white frothy suds.  “What did you even  _ do _ , Plagg,  _ roll  _ in it?” and “You quit brushing your teeth before washing yourself again, I see.  We should be lucky the suits don’t smell like us.” and “I could probably pull a whole new kwami out of this tuft!”)

 

Adrien leaned over, glancing pointedly sinkwards, then whispered, “Mom friend.”

 

He had Tikki pegged.

 

Considering their size, it didn’t take long for Tikki to pronounce Plagg finished, and for Plagg to ooze himself out of the sink looking more like a soaked rag than a tiny god.

 

“Medic,” the rag wheezed, dripping onto Marinette’s small vanity.  “Camembert.”

 

He got a dry washcloth dropped on his head, courtesy of Tikki, instead.  Eventually, though, eventually he was dry and clean, and hovering at the edge of Marinette’s area rug once more, glowing a soft blacklight-purple to Tikki’s pink.

 

Tikki bumped their heads together.  “Wish me luck.”

 

“All of yours and none of mine,” Plagg replied, and Tikki turned to face the center.  A strange, low, crooning hum began to eminate from somewhere on or in her small body, and a pair of fairy-like -- no, insect-like -- wings formed on her back, visible mostly by the distortion they put in the glow.  The pitch rose and fell once, twice in rhythm, then she began to circle the rug.

 

A second, lower hum rumbled into harmony with hers as she passed the quarter-point, Plagg’s violet glow brightening into a V-shaped marking on his forehead reminiscent of tiger stripes or perhaps devil horns.  He entered the circle at the halfway point, directly opposite Tikki, and slowly they cruised around just barely above the carpet, keeping pace with each other and matching their humming into a strangely monotone song.

 

Marinette watched for about a minute, but nothing seemed to happen besides the kwami’s path starting to slide inwards in a spiral.  Well, Tikki had explained that it wouldn’t look like much, so Marinette lifted the pool and set it upside-down over the kwami, hiding them from view.  Mostly from view -- a bit of light still seeped from near the bends they’d had to make in the plastic, and the humming wasn’t muffled at all.

 

"So.”  Marinette clasped her shaking hands together.  “Now we wait."


	2. Chapter 2

Adrien had never realized just how... cavernous his room was.  Especially at night, with the dull city glow casting prison bar shadows on his ceiling, a gaping sky reaching deep inside him and plucking at instincts he didn't know he had.

 

He wasn't a child, to be afraid of the dark, or of odd shadows at the edge of his vision.  But how had he never noticed before that his bed had no cover? Just long stretches of empty space so that anything could see him and just walk right up and eat him in his sleep.

 

(It wasn't a Chat thing, he was pretty sure.  Cats liked small spaces, yes, but he'd been fine with Plagg there.  Even asleep, just the presence of another living thing, something warm and soft and breathing, had made the room tolerable.  Now, though, with Plagg at Marinette's...)

 

Adrien didn't get a wink of sleep.

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Alya was wailing the next morning as Adrien trudged into the classroom.  She had her phone in one hand and the other on Marinette's shoulder, shaking the deceptively petite girl.  (Only because Marinette was letting her, though. Adrien knew those powerful shoulders, the solid stance that couldn't be broken by anything less than an akuma blasting Ladybug off her feet.)  "YOU TURNED OFF YOUR PHONE. HOW COULD YOU MARINETTE."

 

"Um."

 

Alya turned back to her phone, clutching it close and tapping feverishly at the screen.  "No sign of him. NO SIGN, MARINETTE." She waved the phone in Marinette's face, bland white numbers ticking from 35:41 to 35:42 even as Marinette ducked away.  "What if he's hurt? What if he's  _ worse _ ?"  And she tapped at the phone again fruitlessly.  "Ladybug hasn't been seen since either, what if they're  _ both _ \--?"

 

"Alya--"

 

"AND YOU TURNED OFF YOUR PHONE.  ALL DAY. HOW COULD YOU."

 

"ALYA."  Marinette caught Alya gently by the wrists.  "I promise. I would've and will call you if Chat Noir falls out of the sky onto my head."

 

Oh.   _ Oh _ .  That... he'd not even realized, but Alya (and probably all of Paris) only knew up to Chat being captured.  And maybe Ladybug walking into a portal to save and/or ransom him, though if  _ Alya  _ wasn’t sure then  _ no one _ knew that’d happened.

 

Someone bumped against Adrien's arm.  "Morning!" Nino said. Then, "Dude, what happened to your hand?" loudly enough that Alya stuttered mid-sentence and glanced over.

 

"This?" Adrien asked, voice just a little too high as he held up his hand in its cast.  "I was kind of goofing around in the park yesterday," which was enough for the miraculous magic to kick in and wipe the suspicion off Alya's face.  Even without Plagg inside the ring. Whew.

 

"Okay, don't take this wrong, because ow that must've hurt, but."  Nino offered him a lopsided smile. "I'm so proud. You got to do normal teenage stuff!"

 

"Yes, yes, we're delighted," Alya added impatiently.  "And why aren't you surprised, Marinette?" Marinette squeaked under Alya's searching look.  "Were you out with  _ Adrien  _ all day yesterday?  Is  _ that  _ why your phone was off?"  She sounded like a tabloid reporter, almost, all suggestive and creepy.  Which, no, she should know better, Marinette didn't even like him like that.  Marinette squeaked again, this time a little more affirmatively, and Alya smirked.  "Okay. I will accept apology macarons and deets later and forgive you. But oh-em-gee girl you came so close to never being forgiven  _ ever _ !"  And they were back to the panic as she checked her phone again.  "Because this is as big and horrible as the days right before Paris--" she almost visibly tripped over her sentence, choking on the words and blinking.  "... I almost Godwinned myself."

 

"It's okay," Nino said carefully.  "I think you're allowed like one Godwin per life.  Use it wisely, padawan."

 

"THIS IS AS HORRIBLE AND DANGEROUS AS THE DAYS RIGHT WHEN THE NAZIS TOOK PARIS OKAY."

 

“Ugh, I  _ know _ ,” Chloe sneered as she set her purse on her desk.  “Just look at my hair today! It’s almost as bad as  _ yours _ .”  She smirked, flicking her perfectly-manicured fingertips through the curl of her ponytail just to make the polish catch the light.  “I think I found a split end!”

 

“Do not  _ even _ , Chloe,” Alya growled.  “Not today  _ bitch I will split end you _ \--”

 

Adrien shared a worried look with Nino.  "Well... she's not exactly  _ wrong _ ..." Nino said, even as Chloe successfully distracted Alya from her phone.

 

_ She really, really is _ , Adrien thought, carefully not looking at Marinette.

 

How could they reassure Alya without breaking the truce with Papillon?

 

Several hours later, staring blindly at the clock halfway through the last class of the day, Adrien realized there was a slightly more pressing problem.  

 

The spell was supposed to take about thirty-eight hours.  The kwami had started around noon the day before. Which meant, if he and Marinette had actually bothered to count instead of just nodding and covering them up, they'd be popping out and collapsing into the miraculouses around three in the morning.

 

He needed to be in Marinette’s room to catch Plagg tonight, and he didn't have a working miraculous to transform him into a roof-hopping stealthy superhero to get him there.

 

What to do what to do what to do--

 

Tell Marinette, for one.

 

_ Don't panic but 38 = T-13 _ he wrote on the back of his lunch receipt, waiting until the teacher had turned to write something on the board before quickly putting it on the desk behind him.  Hopefully, without the units it'd be cryptic enough Alya wouldn't get it while Marinette would.

 

The lunch receipt landed back on the desk between them.  Nino quickly covered it with his elbow, then, when the teacher turned to demonstrate another problem, let Adrien have it.

 

_ There isn’t even a T in the problem?  When did you look at my homework?! _

 

Oops.  Okay so trying to send secret code in math class was a bad idea.

 

Adrien sketched in a little analog clock symbol, then, just in case, added a cat-eared circle and sent up a quick prayer that Alya wouldn’t read the note.

 

It took a few minutes, where he could practically feel the confusion radiating off Marinette, before--

 

"OH MY GOD."

 

“Marinette!” the teacher snapped.

 

Adrien winced.  He'd forgotten how loudly Marinette reacted to surprises.

 

“S-sorry,” Marinette said.

 

“If you are so excited about the problem, you can come solve it up at the board.”

 

Huge apologies were in order, Adrien thought to himself as Marinette slunk down to the board.  Chloe snickered unpleasantly, and Adrien tried not to fold in on himself.  _ Huge  _ apologies.

 

He didn’t get a chance to start up the apologies before class ended.  The bell rang while Marinette was still slowly trying to work through the problem, and in the confusion of everybody packing up and leaving, Nino caught him by the elbow and hauled him out the door. 

 

“Dude.  What was that?”

 

“What was what?”  Adrien tried to look clueless, and failed miserably by the look Nino was giving him.  “Um.” Come on brilliant idea! “OH. The thing. The note?” Stalling was good. It gave him time to think.

 

“Yeah, dude, the note.  The one that freaked Marinette out.”

 

“Iiiiit waaaaas…” Not homework, if Nino had seen what Marinette had written back.  “A reminder? Of.”  _ Brilliance please please please universe it’s for  _ Ladybug _.  _  “A deadline.  For some, uh, fashion… contest?”

 

_ And Nino bought it.  _  “Oh, dude.  No wonder she flipped.  She’s probably,” and Nino waved his hands around his head in a pretty good imitation of Marinette’s occasional dramatic moments.   _ Thank you universe.  _  “What’s she doing, you know?”

 

“Not really?”  One more sliver of brilliance would really help here.  “I don’t make the clothes, I just wear them. Couldn’t tell a peplum from a pantaloon, except for the bit where I don’t wear either.”

 

“Oh, yeah, makes sense.”  Nino dropped it after that, wandering off into a complicated explanation of his new  _ totally sweet _ playlist project -- “except it keeps trying to wander musically through The Who, which even though they’re still  _ good  _ it kicks the whole idea over into American crime tv, which is  _ way  _ not the thing I’m going for, but man that intro to Baba O’Riley, you know dude?” -- until eventually they had to part ways for dinner.

 

After an undersized dinner of thin soup, chicken grilled with herbes de provence, mushrooms and greens, and a saucer of blackberries arranged more for style than substance, Adrien went back to his room and emptied his bag to start his homework.  

 

A roll of creased, waxy brown paper fell out with the tablet.  One that was vaguely familiar, in a general street-food sort of way.  Adrien unwrapped it, and found half the jambon-beurre Nino had bought from a vendor in the park.  It was a little squashed, and a slice of the ham had slid out onto the top of the baguette and left butter smeared all over, but it was still good.

 

Adrien saved it for a late-night snack, and was glad to have it to help perk him back up when he started winding down around midnight.  Between food and some of the best Ladybug music videos on the Ladyblog -- and WOW that was weird, now, watching those and seeing Marinette through the mask -- Adrien managed to be wide awake and ready to make a daring and Chat-worthy escape when one a.m. rolled around.

 

Gabriel Agreste’s greatest mistake was installing a rock climbing wall in Adrien’s room.  It fit the aesthetic, certainly, and made Adrien’s room look like the set for a photoshoot for some glossy article about amazing teen bedrooms, but he’d certainly never intended for Adrien to actually use the wall.

 

Adrien had, with Plagg’s help, long since looped the alarm wires on one of his bathroom windows.  With his climbing wall experience and a bit of subtle clawing late at night, he had a path right down the side of the house that was almost as easy to use as a staircase.  A bush near the edge of the property hid an electric maintenance box, and Adrien as well when he slipped over the wall and shimmied down a drainpipe.

 

His sneakers hit public pavement less than five minutes after he shut his computer down.  “Two points,” he murmured to himself.  _ And the crowd goes wild, wooooo _ .  He checked that Nino’s hoodie was still in place over his head, carefully didn’t glance upward looking for cameras, and headed out into the night.

 

The bakery was dark and cold at first glance, but Marinette’s windows up on the top floor -- the sashes up just a couple of centimeters for fresh air -- glowed almost indiscernably pink if Adrien didn’t look at them head-on.  He leaned against a lamppost in the street below, hands in his front pocket and clenched around his phone, and waited. He’d have Plagg back soon. And answers. Hopefully… hopefully… a good answer.

 

… But what was a good answer?

 

Did he want the kwami to find Papillon’s wife?  What did it mean if Papillon’s wife  _ had  _ been lost in some other dimension or a magical trap for years?  What if she’d built a new life, one that was better for her, one that was free of a supervillain?  

 

What if she was happy?

 

Bringing her back would force her to give up what freedom she’d found, the peace of escaping from a man who would turn a miraculous to  _ this… _

 

Adrien rubbed a hand across his face.  He couldn’t think that way. Finding Papillon’s wife would be the end of the akuma, the attacks on innocent people… on small children… the explosions, people injured in the rubble and terrorized, the constant threat of being mind-controlled to attack his Lady, to hurt her…

 

And what if Papillon’s wife wasn’t happy?

 

What if Papillon’s wife wasn’t alive at all?  What then? Being Chat was the only escape he had from his own prison.  If Papillon decided they were lying, or went even crazier… would Adrien have to give up Plagg to another holder, just to save everyone he knew from being targets?  If he had to face his father as just ordinary Adrien, now even more famous and endangered from being the former Chat Noir… He’d never see the outside of his house again.

 

No.  No no no nonononononononononono---

 

Inside his pocket, his phone lit up.  He pulled it out in bemusement, since it hadn’t rung, and saw the lock screen, no text or call alerts.  He’d just tightened his grip enough that he’d triggered the phone to turn on.

 

At least it’d distracted him.  And hey, universe was giving him a cluebat, pretty much, right?  Think less, friend more, or something. Ladybug -- Marinette -- would know what to say, even if it was just panicking with him.

 

He thumbed in the code and called her.

 

_ Bzzt bzzt.  Bzzt bzzt. Bzzt bzzt. _

 

_ Hi, this is Marinette!  I can’t take your call right now, but you know what to do!  And no, Alya, if there’s an akuma I’m probably looking for you, not filming it!  Go hide! _

 

Heh.  That was one way of throwing Alya off during an akuma attack.  Adrien hung up and tried again.

 

And again.

 

… Had Marinette fallen asleep?  It was nearly 2 am after all, but…

 

“Hey, Marinette, it’s Adrien.  I kind of… don’t really want to be talking to voicemail right now.  Please pick up?” He didn’t dare remind her that the kwami were due to finish any minute, not on a recording like this.  “Marinette, come on. Big project?”

 

Nothing.

 

“Okay… I’ll just call again.”

 

So he did, eyeing the street for stray pebbles.  Maybe he could throw them at her window, it would be very 80’s movie.  But there were none: the Paris street cleaners did their jobs too well.

 

At the upper edge of his vision, the faint pinkish glow flared once, then faded away.

 

Time to pull out the big guns.  “My Lady!” he called out, sounding far too loud in the middle of the night-silent street.  “Gabriel Agreste is here to see your dress!”

 

He faintly heard a yelp through the window three stories above.  A fainter clatter, and then the voicemail picked up. “ _ Allo? _ ” Marinette asked muzzily.  “ _ Dress?  What? _ ”

 

“Good morning, my Lady.”  Whew. It’d worked. “Tikki and Plagg just finished, I think.”

 

“ _ Tikki and…?  OH! _ ”  Another clatter came over the phone, and Marinette’s windows flooded with light.  Her shadow passed across the window, once in a diagonal tumble, then bobbing up and down with the great disc of the kiddie pool.  And now he could only barely hear her voice, nothing intelligible. Great. 

 

“My Lady?  Marinette? Allo?”  Shoot. “Allo?”

 

Nothing.

 

Then Marinette’s shadow appeared in the window again, this time staying put, shoulders shifting slightly.  A few moments later, one slim hand shoved the window sash all the way up, and she leaned out, hair falling loose and messy over the shoulder of a cotton pajama shirt.  (It was pink, unsurprisingly, so pastel as to be nearly white, and printed with little blue and mint-green stars.)

 

Adrien stepped forward, pushing his hoodie back off his hair, and waved.

 

She brightened.  Then she brought a small bag out from where it’d been hidden by the windowsill, and lowered it on a braided rope of familiar pale-blue yarn.  So this was how she’d figured out how to get Plagg back to him: Rapunzel-style.

 

The bag itself was just a small paper shopping bag, white with the T&S logo on it, but when Adrien caught it, it turned out to be too heavy to only hold Plagg in it.  So Adrien peered inside. One Plagg, check, curled up too neatly to have done it naturally: Marinette must’ve arranged him to what looked most comfortable for a kwami.  And underneath him, a thick black cushion embroidered with little green pawpads, red ladybugs, and cheese wedges in white and pale yellow. No one made fabric like that.  It had to be custom-embroidered, and since Marinette hadn’t known anything about Plagg before Saturday night, done over the last two or three evenings. Stress sewing, Adrien bet.

 

He held the bag close, met Marinette’s eyes, and brought the phone back up to his ear.

 

Marinette blinked, then ducked back inside.  Another pass of shadow, diagonally upwards this time, and some soft rustling came over the line.  “ _ Sorry about that _ ,” she said.  “ _ I dropped the phone in my bed.  Were you waiting long? _ ”

 

“Not really, no,” Adrien lied.  Technically he hadn’t been. He’d waited much longer for worse reason, and it was a nice night out.  Cool but not cold, no rain, and he had Nino’s sweatshirt to hide in. And now he had Plagg back and his Lady on the line.  Perfect timing. “Did they manage to say…?”

 

“ _ Yeah _ ,” Marinette said.  “ _ They can’t guarantee it’s her, but… there’s definitely  _ someone  _ out there who should be here _ .”

 

“Alive?”

 

“ _ Yeah _ .”

 

“Good.  That’s… that’s good.”  It’d all be over next week, then.

 

“ _ I’m glad.  We can finally get this poor woman home _ ,” Marinette said quietly.  “ _ And maybe into couples’ counseling.  I can’t imagine being married to Papillon.  He’s going to be in the doghouse for  _ years  _ if she stays with him _ .”  

 

Adrien couldn’t answer.  That just seemed so… so… distant.  Unreal. If this, if that, maybe then… What about being them?  What about being Chat and Ladybug?

 

Marinette yawned.  “ _ It’ll be nice to only deal with regular crime.  Put down muggings, support protests… nnnh… Alya wants to do PSAs about being kind to people and calming children _ …”

 

Wait what?  “As Ladybug and Chat?”  Together? He wouldn’t have to quit?

 

“ _ Mm.  Bet you’re good with kids, minou _ …”

 

“Kids?” Adrien echoed.

 

No response.

 

“Marinette?”

 

Nothing.

 

“... Good night, my Lady.”

 

He wouldn’t have to quit.  He was still free, with Plagg and Chat and Ladybug-Marinette and all of Paris.

 

Adrien bounced all the way home.

 

He couldn’t regret the late hour entirely come morning, but it was very close.

 

"Wow, man, you look like crap."

 

Adrien sighed heavily at Nino.  "You're not supposed to be able to tell."

 

"You're wearing makeup and it's not caked on like from a photoshoot.  I can totally tell."

 

"Caked on," Adrien muttered, dropping into his seat without much care for whether his father heard about his decorum or not.  His schoolbag hit the floor with a dull thud. "I know about twenty artists who would tear you apart hearing that."

 

"Uh huh and how many of them are asking how much sleep you got last night?"

 

“Enough that I’m replacing my blood with coffee.”  Adrien saluted Nino with his Starbucks cup. Venti.  “Breakfast of champions.”

 

“... I would argue, but Alya’s actually doing worse.”  Nino pointed over Adrien’s shoulder, and Adrien turned to look.

 

Alya had dark circles under her eyes, her hair looked like she’d been finger-combing it all night, and she had an even larger Starbucks next to her Starbucks.  The two cardboard cups flanked her phone like candles upon some altar to a modern god of consumerism, and as Adrien watched, she took the lid off one and unceremoniously dumped a full bottle of 5-hour energy into it.  “Hail Caesar,” she told the ceiling up at the front of the classroom. “We who are about to die demand our cat back.” And she drank a full quarter of the drink down without stopping to breathe.

 

“Alya.  Babe--”

 

“Why have I not been akumatized yet?” she demanded of the same spot in the ceiling.  “Fifty-nine hours.  _ Lady Wifi will find you.  Lady Wifi will end you. Lady Wifi will get Chat back _ .”

 

Nino and Adrien shared an alarmed look.  “Okay, babe.” Nino carefully settled his hands on Alya’s shoulders, while Adrien snuck the coffee out of her reach.  One of the cups was already empty, and Adrien prayed she hadn’t put one of those energy shots into it. “How about you take Adrien to visit the nurse, and see if she’ll let you lay in the clinic with him and watch your phone?”

 

“Nino--” Adrien protested.

 

“You gotta rest, dude.  I’ve got the homework, don’t sweat it.  Alya, babe, go with Adrien. Okay?” He leaned towards Adrien.  “ _ Get her out of here before Chloe shows up _ .”

 

Oh.  Oh, ow, yeah, Chloe’s way of distracting people would just make things much, much worse right now.  “Got it. Alya, hey, come on, I’m as worried about Chat as you, how about you tell me what all you’ve been doing while we walk…?”  And he steered Alya out the door and down the hall, half-listening as she faded in and out of ranting.

 

The nurse’s office, fortunately, wasn’t far: down the stairs and in the back corner of the courtyard, a long narrow room that ended in a fire door.  It held four cots that were more like padded benches, pressed longways against the walls; the medicine cabinet was barely deep enough for a box of band-aids, and couldn’t be reached if the door was open.  The nurse’s desk was an end table that an open folder would hang off the edges of, next to an office chair and a tiny window into the courtyard.

 

“What seems to be the problem?” the nurse asked, standing and setting aside a file.

 

“I… kind of maybe didn’t sleep last night,” Adrien answered, “and Alya’s… I’m not sure she’s slept the past two and a half days, and I  _ do  _ know she’s drunk more coffee and energy shots already than is probably legal, and she’s demanding to be akumatized so she can go fight Papillon…?”

 

The nurse sighed.  “You aren’t even the first students with that complaint today,” she said, which was when Adrien noticed that one of the cots was encircled by curtains, the clinical pastel-blue kind that had a panel of netting at the top.  “If I run out of room, I’m going to start sending students home.” She gave Adrien a considering look. “... Or to friends’ houses, if they aren’t finding sufficient rest at home. Lie down, Mlle. Cesaire.”

 

“Fifty-nine hours,” Alya said hollowly.

 

“Quite.  Down you go.  You too, M. Agreste.”  She gestured him down onto a cot, and Adrien toed off his sneakers and lay down.

 

The last he remembered seeing was Alya’s thousand-meter stare through her phone.

 

Alya missed school on Wednesday, and again on Thursday.  She wasn’t the only one: Chloe, Ivan, and Mylene all left at some point on Tuesday; Juleka halfway through Wednesday; and Nathaniel on Thursday after a detention for drawing on his sketchpad during class, then his notebook, then the desk after each was confiscated.  It’d been a very good rendition of Chat and Ladybug escaping barred cells and stomping Papillon, all in chibi by the time Nathaniel was reduced to using the desk.

 

Adrien touched Plagg, a curled-up ball of fluff in his shirt pocket -- fluff that hadn’t moved of his own volition yet -- and watched the teachers gather surreptitiously during lunch, speaking in low voices and glancing at the sky for akuma that never came.  It felt like the entire city was holding its breath, waiting for the next shot in a war.

 

They had to do something to fix this.  But what?

 

“We can’t last the two weeks, minou,” Marinette said that afternoon, as soon as they got out of Nino’s earshot.

 

“I know.”  Adrien wished Plagg was awake, even if the kwami would be a useless stinky pain in the neck.  “But even when they wake…”

 

Marinette bit her lip.  “If he saw us out transformed…”  The truce would be off, and Papillon would start sending out akuma again.  They wouldn’t be able to rescue whoever it was Plagg and Tikki had found. They just wouldn’t have the  _ time _ .  “And he has to be watching the Ladyblog just in case of that.  He’d have to be stupid not to.”

 

Yeah.  “Maybe we can somehow tranq Alya.”

 

“I know.”  Marinette fretted. “She’s going to be  _ hospitalized  _ at this rate--”

 

“<Excuse me>,” a man asked in Chinese, from down near Adrien’s shoulder.  Adrien and Marinette blinked, and looked at him in unison.

 

The man looked elderly at first glance, slightly built and hunched over a cane, but his receding hair was light brown instead of gray, and his face wasn’t particularly wrinkled.  A second glance told Adrien it was a bottle brown rather than a natural one, though, and the hunch entirely natural for all that the man wasn’t putting any weight on the cane.

 

He wore the red Hawaiian shirt of a low-class tourist from American television, half of which was hidden behind an open map of Paris.  “<We need to talk>,” he continued, still in Chinese, with his focus mostly on Marinette.

 

Who didn’t speak Chinese, Adrien knew.  “I’m sorry, what?” she asked flatly.

 

“He’s asking for a favor,” Adrien said.

 

“Yes okay but this is M. Fu.”  Fu…? Where did Adrien know that name from?  “He knows French.”

 

Fu smiled innocently.  “I did not want to seem a creep, but a poor old tourist hoping perhaps the young lady may know his language is merely lost.”  He folded the map crisply away, and inclined his head at Adrien. “I am glad to see you well, heimao.”

 

‘Black Cat’--  _ how did he know that?! _

 

“He’s the guy who took care of Tikki and Plagg before giving them to us,” Marinette explained.

 

“... Oh.”  OH.  _ That  _ M. Fu.  The one who had blown Papillon off and not told the kwami what he wanted.

 

“And I’m afraid I must speak to you -- all four of you -- on a most serious matter.”

 

Marinette crossed her arms.  “It will have to wait, then.”  Sounded like she was just as unimpressed as Adrien was.  “Tikki and Plagg are unavailable.”

 

Fu sighed.  “That is most unfortunate,” he said.  “When will they be available? We can schedule an appointment to discuss matters.”

 

“I can guess what those matters are and we can discuss them right now,” Marinette snapped, and Fu blinked, taken aback.

 

Ouch.  “Mari--”

 

“You didn't even  _ try _ ,” she continued as if Adrien hadn’t said a word.  “You just flat-out said no and didn't even  _ ask their opinion _ .  They're more informed about their abilities than you are, they have to live with them!”

 

“Mari!”

 

“And  _ furthermore--mmph? _ !”

 

Adrien pinned Marinette’s flailing arms lightly, one hand covering her mouth, and gave Fu an apologetic look.  “They’ll be available between four and eight tomorrow evening, if that works for you, M. whatever your name is please give us a minute.”  And he dragged Marinette away, uncovering her mouth and catching her by the arm to pull her a few meters away. “Mari what the heck was that?” he hissed.

 

“I…” She visibly deflated.  “Sorry.” She paused long enough that Adrien wondered if he should prompt her for an answer, when she continued, “I could see Manon across the park over his shoulder, and just…”  She rubbed at her face. “Puppeteer.” Adrien remembered that akuma. One that had turned out to be just a little girl. “She’s  _ five  _ and none of this needed to happen in the first place.”

 

Well, no, but… “That doesn’t mean you can just start yelling at him in the middle of the park,” Adrien pointed out.  You just didn’t do that to adults, much less about secret identity stuff.

 

“I know, but…” Marinette glanced back towards Fu… no.  Towards the playground some distance behind and to the left of the man.

 

Puppeteer had been terrifying, one of Chat’s worst akuma, but… she was also just five.  Like the kids photographers sometimes got to join Adrien in shoots.

 

Adrien settled Marinette onto a nearby bench, pressing gently but firmly on her shoulders.  “I’ll send him off, and we can go see if… Manon, you said?... wants to play.”

 

“Adrien, what--?”

 

Adrien squared his shoulders, smothered the expression trying to tug at the corners of his mouth, and returned to Fu.  “Sorry about that, M. Fu,” he told the man, rubbing sheepishly at his hair. “It’s been one of those weeks. Anyway, I hate to impose on you, but it would really help Tikki and Plagg -- and Paris -- if you could do us a small favor before the meeting tomorrow…”

 

Fu listened, nodding thoughtfully as Adrien explained.  “Yes…” he murmured to himself. “Yes, that’s something that rather needs to be done, even if we are currently in disagreement.”  He smiled. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I knew Plagg chose well in you.”

 

“Thank you, sir,” Adrien replied.  Model face, model face, nothing but innocence and sincerity here.  He managed to hold it through saying farewells, and until Fu had left the park and disappeared from sight.

 

Then he fell onto the bench next to Marinette, and let the Chat-smug grin beam out.

 

Marinette leaned ever-so-slightly away.  “Minou… what did you do?”

 

Adrien only grinned wider.

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


It was barely an hour later, and Adrien had just bitten into a fresh-from-the-oven hot, buttery croissant in Marinette’s room when his phone buzzed its most excited alert tone.

 

“Ey Mni?” he hummed through the bread.

 

“Chew and swallow, minou.”

 

Adrien obeyed, almost lamenting the delay that speaking would give his next bite.  Almost. “Check the Ladyblog.”

 

Marinette blinked, then frowned over at her desktop and went to wake it up.  “Minou… did you do what I suddenly think you might’ve done?”

 

“Maaaaaybe?”

 

“Did you even warn him?” she asked rhetorically as she pulled up the internet.  The Ladyblog was already up in a tab, and the very top of the blog feed under the banner had a video blinking in bright Ladybug red.

 

_ NEW LIVESTREAM! _ the curling letters proclaimed over the desaturated play button.  Marinette ignored it, going to the bottom corner to hit restart.

 

“Croissant?” Adrien asked, offering the basket as he took a seat next to her.

 

“Please.”

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


Life was completely unfair, Alya thought -- not for the first time -- as she watched another minute tick by on her phone’s Chatwatch.  Her head was heavy on her arms, the temple piece of her glasses digging into the soft flesh of her bicep, but it was a minor annoyance compared to the rest of her life.

 

How could people keep sabotaging her?  How was Lady Wifi supposed to punch Papillon and save Chat when people kept taking away her coffee, making Alya  _ sleep  _ and  _ eat  _ and  _ put the phone away Alya _ ?

 

“Put the phone away, Alya,” her mother said tiredly on cue, knocking on her bedroom door.  “You’re going to give yourself a headache.”

 

“I have a duty,” Alya muttered into her arm, “to the citizens of Paris.”

 

“It’ll keep.”  Her mother had no  _ heart _ .  No  _ soul _ .  No sense of the  _ important  _ things in life.  “Come on, get up, girl.”  And then she ruthlessly plucked the phone from Alya’s hands.  Alya bolted upright, the world swaying a little off-kilter, but her protest didn’t get out before her mother continued, “You have an hour before dinner.  Plenty of time to get a shower or go relax on the balcony. Maybe take a walk. Do  _ something  _ to clear your head, honey.”

 

“But Ladybug--”

 

“Would want you well.”  Her mother pointed sharply at the balcony.  “Outside. Look. It’s a beautiful day.”

 

Alya looked.  Sunshine and blue sky and light clouds, innocent and happy like the entire city wasn’t  _ waiting for doom to fall _ .  The pale building across the park, nearly blinding after so long focused on her phone’s white-numbers-on-black, and its gray tiled roof.  A small, slouched figure in green, sitting on a disk floating low between two of the chimnies there.

 

“ _ Oh my god! _ ”  Alya leapt for the phone in her mother’s hand.  Chatwatch off, video  _ on _ , point out the window and livestream function  _ yes, _ “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s your favorite Ladyblogger, me!  Alya Cesaire! And I have just spotted an akuma near my house!!”

 

“Alya,  _ no _ !”

 

Alya ducked her mother’s grab, slammed out the door, and ran for the park.

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


“Alya  _ yes _ .”  Adrien grinned, leaning forward to watch the image bouncing down the stairs of the apartment building and outside.

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


“Stay there stay there stay there--” Alya prayed between breaths as she ran through the park towards the building she’d seen the akuma at.  It had to stay there. She couldn’t record Ladybug’s triumphant return -- there  _ had  _ to be a triumphant return, there just  _ had  _ to -- if the akuma didn’t stay where she could chase it down!

 

This side of the park was all townhouses, two-level split apartments that Alya… didn’t actually have a way to get up to the rooftops of.

 

The building’s corner had the kind of large square stones that had a pretty wide gap for the mortar for decorative reasons.  Almost like a ladder. Yeah. Yeah, that would work, she did fine in gym and that didn’t nearly have stakes like this! Alya jammed her foot into the lowest gap, pocketed her phone -- careful to leave the lens peeking up above the fabric of her shirt’s pocket -- and reached for the highest gap she could.

 

“I’m fairly certain that’s illegal, young lady.”

 

Alya squeaked, flailed, and fell backwards onto a soft surface that bobbed under her.

 

“I’m also fairly certain you’re not supposed to be running around barefoot.”  A little old man’s head came into view, a green hood fit snugly over his head and a matching, round-eyed mask making his eyes look a bit like goggles.  “Are you all right?”

 

“ _ Omigosh you’re the akuma! _ ”  Alya flipped over onto her knees, discovering the bobbing thing was the akuma’s floaty disk seat, and grabbed her phone back out.  “What’s your name? What’s your problem? Does this mean Papillon doesn’t have Chat Noir anymore? I’m livestreaming this, Ladybug at least will be here soon!”

 

The akuma’s eyes were weirdly wide -- surprise, no doubt, Alya was the most impressive intrepid reporter ever even if she was just fifteen -- as he leaned away from her phone.  “So much makes sense now,” the akuma murmured.

 

“Uh huh.  So what’s wrong?  Come tell Paris all about it.”  Monologuing was good! Bring attention to people’s issues, stall waiting for Ladybug, Alya was  _ so  _ on this.

 

The akuma smiled.  But it wasn’t a normal akuma crazy smile, no, it was a weirdly gentle one for some reason Alya could not guess at.  “I can see where you’d be confused,” he said, “but I am no client of the Butterfly.”

 

No client of the…?  “What.”

 

His smile brightened a little.  “I’m not an akuma.”

 

“Okay, no, that makes no sense,” Alya said, voice echoing oddly in her ears.  “You’ve got the… and the…?” She gestured at the floaty disk, the weird greenish spandexy outfit that hung loosely on his frame, the goggly mask… actually she was getting a sort of weird turtle vibe off of it, almost like…

 

Animal theme.  Magic powers. Calm, friendly, and seemingly sane.  Not an akuma.

 

“... A Miraculous?”

 

The man inclined his head.  “Most insightful, dear Ladyblogger.  I do indeed safeguard a Miraculous, just as Ladybug and Chat Noir -- and Papillon himself, much to my sorrow -- can claim.  I can be called Turtle.”

 

She could practically  _ hear  _ the internet breaking from here.  Homg. “Why haven’t we seen you before now?” Alya asked breathlessly.  “Does this mean Ladybug and Chat are--?” And there went her mood.

 

“They are fine.”

 

Nevermind  _ everything was celebration and rainbows _ .

 

“I’m afraid I have little more information than that,” Turtle continued, but who cared, Ladybug and Chat were okay.  “As for why now…” Celebration and rainbows and a whole new Miraculous superhero and Ladybug and Chat were okay. Turtle gestured at himself, and Alya tried to rein her attention back in.  “Look at me, Mademoiselle,” he said ruefully. “I am old.”

 

Okay yes, and?  So was Professor X.

 

“I must use my shell rather than my legs to travel with any speed, and my transformation fails more often than not.”  Oh. Oh. That would be… yeah, that would be a reason. “I cannot always bend to direct the flow of magic correctly.” He sighed.  “To battle is the sad province of the young. But,” and he lightened again, “there is no need to fight today, and so I am suited to -- heh -- suit up.”

 

Wait.  That sounded a bit like… “So you… did you come out just to talk to  _ me _ ?” Alya asked.

 

“Is that so surprising?” Turtle replied.  “I am good for little more than talking these days, after all.  And our dear Luckies have been concerned how badly current circumstances are affecting the people of Paris.”  He tipped his head down, giving the impression of peering at Alya over a set of nonexistent glasses. “Considering you rushed out barefoot and promptly attempted to climb a building, I see their concerns are well founded.”

 

“Ah, well, I--”  Er.

 

“Come, indulge an old man in his ramblings, won’t you, Mademoiselle?  And perhaps we shall distract you from the buildings.”

 

“The buil--?”  The disk shivered, then rose quickly into the air, and Alya grabbed for the sides.  “Does this thing  _ fly _ ?!”

 

“Just a bit.”

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


“Wait, he already told her we’re okay… what does he think he’s doing?” Marinette asked, squinting at the stream.

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


An akuma had never taken Alya this high up.  She’d only ever been higher on plane trips and that one time she’d gone to the Eiffel Tower.  

 

It was a lot different on a two-meter wide magic hexagon with her legs dangling out over open space.  Alya kept her camera and her focus on Turtle, who was kindly and thankfully holding her by the arm instead of creepishly close.  Even if she might have welcomed a bit of close right now.

 

“So.”  Focus on Turtle.  Focus on interviewing.  She had a  _ sacred duty _ .  Did Ladybug panic swooping around with her yo-yo like Spiderman?  No she did not. “Why aren’t Ladybug and Chat out? I mean, you said they’ve been worried about how upset we’ve been,” for the last  _ five days why _ , “so why couldn’t they just come out and tell us they were fine?”

 

Turtle chuckled faintly.  “It is the same reason there have been no akuma, despite so many of the city being, ah, in the correct state of mind.  The last altercation with Papillon left all parties concerned unable to transform--”

 

“ _ WHAT? _ !”

 

“--for a couple of weeks,” Turtle finished, giving her a measuring look.  “My goodness, how much coffee have you had today? It will quite stunt your growth, you know.”

 

“Google says it doesn’t.”  She knew. She’d checked after the first time her mother said it.  Couldn’t transform? Ladybug and Chat  _ and  _ Papillon?   _ None  _ of them?  What had  _ happened _ ?

 

“Ah, but most parents do not have magic to keep up with their children as it is.  And I recall when coffee was too expensive to spend on the young.” Turtle’s gaze drifted off into the distance.  “The world is not what it once was, young Alya. The Butterfly was once a boon companion, and -- although much less recently -- one of the most revered of Miraculous.”

 

Alya boggled.  “But Ladybug--?  She’s the strongest!  She beats Papillon all the time!”

 

Turtle smiled gently.  “She does,” he agreed. “It’s not what she was created for, but she does have that ability.”   _ Then what was Ladybug for, if not--?  _  “But strength is not necessarily reverence, nor all-encompassing.  Imagine, if you will, you live many thousands of years ago-- that everyone you’ve ever known is but twenty people.  Perhaps thirty. Oh, you meet other groups on occasion, perhaps even know the name of their leaders, but for the most part it’s just you and your extended family.

 

“In those days, terrible creatures roamed the Earth.  You scoff, I see it in your face. It does sound like the opening to a television show.  But the memory is preserved, very faintly, very distorted, in stories. Terrible creatures.  Some were simple animals, merely large or carnivorous. Others were spirits, much like those worshipped in Japan as kami.  Some were both, and who was to know whether the animal or the magic was first? Some were beings that did not belong to the world.

 

“And some… some were Miraculous themselves.”

 

At least that last bit was hardly a revelation.  Exhibit A: Papillon.

 

“Let us say your family, your twenty or thirty people, had the Cat.  You could perhaps carve shelters out of rock faces, which was of more use than we today would think, and if you ran into one of these terrible beings?  The Cat could destroy it… if he was charged. If you’d wasted your shot on getting out of the rain that day, your entire family would be lost.

 

“And what of the Ladybug?  She can give you a new spear when yours breaks, or a length of rope to guide animals to a pitfall, but if you are attacked?  Your only hope is that it’s an animal that can be cleansed of power and restored to its natural state.

 

“The Butterfly, though… the Butterfly creates a powerful, magical warrior of one of your family’s noncombatants.  The children who are your tribe’s future, the elders who are its knowledge… they become a warrior to join the battle and save your family.  It is a terrible thing, to see that skill corrupted.”

 

Well.  That made sense, but… Alya knew her viewers, and too much of the mindset of the internet trolls among them.  “That sounds an awful lot like sympathy for Papillon,” she prompted warily.

 

“For him?  No,” Turtle said flatly.  “He must answer for too much.  But for his Miraculous… yes, there is sympathy.”

 

Okay, between that and the way Turtle had been switching between pronouns for the Miraculouses, Alya had a sinking suspicion.  “For a piece of jewelry?”

 

“Ah, Mlle. Cesaire, what do you think the Miraculous are?” Turtle asked.  “Do not answer, you have already said. A piece of jewelry. Magical, yes, but little more than a pretty battery.”  Dammit. Alya knew exactly what he was about to say. “No. They live, the Miraculous do.”

 

Alya cursed in rapid Creole silently in her head.

 

“Little beings, wise and ancient,” Turtle continued, mild and implacable, “and only mostly capable of understanding humans.  The Miraculous stones are little more than a bedroom for them.”

 

“They’re alive.”  Alya just wanted this clarified for the internet.  Alive. No way to argue someone had missed that fact.

 

“And why would they not be?”  Turtle smiled, and patted at the edge of his goggles like… well, like they were a close friend.  “Yes. They live, they laugh and love, they befriend their chosen holders, and,” he sobered, “for centuries they’ve only known the world through a veil of secrecy as belief in and acceptance of magic has vanished.”  He sobered further. “The Butterfly likely has very little idea why the Ladybug and Cat fight it.”

 

Okay no.  “But it has to!” Alya objected.  “Every akuma’s been all ‘give me the Miraculous’, how could it not know?”

 

“When three princes have three armies,” Turtle said, “how does the war look to the soldier?”

 

They’d just had a unit like that in history class.  Charlemagne’s three grandsons. No one really asked what the armies thought or even knew at all.  Just off to war in a royal power struggle that lasted years.

 

Was that what the Butterfly Miraculous thought Ladybug and Chat Noir were?  But they were  _ superheroes _ … but how would it (he?) know any different?

 

“I think I’d best get you home, young lady.  Your mother will be frantic.”

 

Turtle said nothing else after that for the duration of the trip.

  
  


-0-0-0

  
  


“He did  _ what?! _ ”  Tikki shrieked between bites of cookie the next afternoon.  Marinette stumbled back in shock, but Tikki’s eyes were pinned to the video replaying on Marinette’s computer.  “Fu, what are you  _ thinking _ ?  You have a  _ sacred duty _ \--”

 

Plagg was too busy choking on cheese and laughter to comment, half-buried in a mixing bowl of Camembert.  The rounds had broken under his claws and teeth, and were oozing over each other into a smelly lumpy mass.  Marinette had wisely put the bowl near an open window and aimed a small fan at it, but he could still see the screen.

 

“This is serious, Plagg!” Tikki swallowed another cookie whole with a loud, furious gulp.  “The temple was destroyed for these secrets and Wayzz,” she pointed sharply at the video, “just let Fu put it on the  _ internet _ !”

 

“Hahaha Tikmph--khahak--mmfnhg--you--” And there went any hope of understanding a word out of Plagg’s mouth.  Adrien, staring wide-eyed at Tikki, reached blindly into the bowl and pinched his kwami as a makeshift Heimlich maneuver.

 

Plagg horked up a glob of cheese (which was  _ absolutely disgusting _ , why did Adrien have to have the gross kwami, he loved Plagg he really did but  _ seriously. gross _ ), and then twitched and looked towards one of the slanted, blank pink walls at the front end of Marinette’s room.

 

A dark point appeared at the center of the wall, then stretched into a vertical line about a meter long.  The line broadened into a sort of diamond shape, if diamonds were hexagonal and deep green, then a square slid out of each side of the diamond-ish hexagon and spread into trapezoids, with two triangles connecting them at the top and bottom.  The result looked very much like a turtle shell large enough to be a door.

 

And then, from the other side where there should be nothing but a three-story drop to the street, came a polite knock.

 

“Master Fu!” Tikki cried.  She dropped her cookie and darted for the door, opening it with a sharp yank.  “What did you think you were doing?” she snapped as the elderly Chinese man, dressed as Turtle, entered from a swirling greenish space that Adrien’s eyes slid off of like water on a shell.  “This-- this _ petty revenge _ \-- we do something without your consent so you do something without ours?  Without even consulting our chosen--?”

 

“Peace, Tikki.”  Fu set one hand heavily on her head, nearly engulfing it.  His green gloves vanished, costume dissolving into a green, scale-speckled kwami, even as he said,  “I’m surprised, usually you’re the one to see the strategy first.”

 

“Fu.  I woke up twenty minutes ago.   _ Explain _ .”

 

Fu stepped around to Marinette’s chaise, settled carefully upon the end of it, rested his cane upright between his knees, and matched Tikki’s maternal-styled fury with a wise-elder stare of his own.  “The internet is already beginning to speak of it, as planned. And I suspect Plagg’s noticed…?” The sniggering cat kwami waved one cheese-dripping paw at him, barely visible over the rim of the bowl.  “But my strategy is this.  _ Slavery is illegal _ .”

 

Marinette stared.  Adrien stared. Plagg peeked over the rim of the bowl, whiskers trembling and eyes narrowed with glee.  And Tikki… Tikki paused in her fury. “Go on,” she said slowly.

 

“Not that you and Plagg are enslaved,” Fu said.  “Nor is Wayzz, for all that he refuses to not call me Master--”

 

“You’re a master of the teachings,” Wayzz muttered from inside Fu’s shirt pocket.

 

“But there is the saying, make no move that does not advance at least two plans.  So. Plan the first. There are three kinds of people in the world today. Those who would never misuse magical powers, such as the three of us.  Those who would only do so, such as far too many of the already-powerful. It makes no difference to those first two groups if the Miraculous is an object or a living being.  But then there is the third group.”

 

Oh.   _ Oh. _  “People who  _ would  _ do whatever they wanted with an object, but not to a  _ person _ !” Marinette gasped.

 

Fu nodded.  “And so, I have protected us from that group.  And then there is the other plan.”

 

Adrien had this one.  “The forums are already talking about legal stuff,” he said.  “Do the kwami count as people legally? Can the Butterfly be charged with crimes?  Would he or she be an accessory or a terrorist, or would they be considered a victim themselves?  Should Papillon be charged with unlawful imprisonment and coercion?”

 

“All questions for the courts,” Fu agreed, “but you are alive.  You are sapient. The majority of you are popular. The public will protest if you are not given legal standing.”

 

Tikki settled back onto her plate, nibbling thoughtfully at a cookie as she mulled that over. “And if they give kwami legal standing… they can’t  _ not  _ give it to other humans.  To  _ all  _ other humans.  No matter their religion or ethnicity, or if they’re refugees or non-citizens...”

 

Fu blinked in surprise.

 

“Though you could have at least discussed it with us, and then spoken to Alya a second time,” Tikki said.

 

“Ah.  Well. In that…”  Fu mused for a moment, then quirked a little smile.  “In that much, I was being petty.”


End file.
